Travel and Tourism

Tourism Comes Home: Families Rediscover The Sunday Drive

With gas prices moving steadily upward, many tourists are rethinking their vacation travel plans and looking for tourist attractions close to home. With economizing in mind, the leisurely Sunday drive is making a comeback.

The Sunday Drive – The Comeback Kid

Back when automobiles were a novelty, when the car was king, the whole family used to pile into the car for a Sunday drive. Getting to a destination was not the point of the Sunday drive; the family drove for the sake of driving. Roads were new, and there weren't many cars on the road back then, so driving was a pleasant recreational experience.

Today, when adding up the cost of an interstate road trip or, even worse, an interstate flight, the Sunday drive starts to seem like an attractive form of tourism once again. These days, though, the Sunday drive has a destination: a local treasure that residents have rediscovered.

Visiting Small Towns

One of the attractions the tourism industry sometimes overlooks is the appeal of the small town. Outside every urban area, beyond the suburbs, are small towns that are ideal tourism destinations for a Sunday drive. Most small towns have one or two unique restaurants where an entire family can have lunch—not fast food stores or franchise chains, but real diners and cafes, often with the owner working on site.

After lunch, everyone can get an ice cream cone or a soda and walk around Main Street, looking at the town's shops and houses. If you're really ambitious, you cam plan a family scavenger hunt, and spend the afternoon looking for unusual items in the town.

Old McDonald Had A Farm

Organic farms that welcome visitors are another family tourism option. Farms are often far enough outside of town to make a fun Sunday drive, but not too far away. For a meaningful educational outing for the children, try to find a sanctuary farm that houses rescue animals. Sanctuary farms welcome visitors, and they periodically host volunteer days where the whole family can enjoy a unique tourism experience of working on the farm for a good cause. These volunteer days usually include a delicious vegetarian picnic lunch. The events are extremely popular, so be sure to call ahead to make arrangements.

Drive Down Memory Lane

Are Mom and Dad locals? Were they born in nearby towns? What are your family's local historical destinations? This kind of a Sunday drive will require you to do a little homework, but it will pay off in the end. If your family has any local history in the area, track down places that are meaningful to your family lore, like your parents' home, or the bottling plant where your dad worked, or the elementary school you attended. If you can, take someone who knows the stories behind the places with you on your Sunday drive.

Be sure to take plenty of pictures, because this kind of tourism should be preserved in your family scrapbook. With a little imagination and very little cash, local tourism has been revived with the return of the Sunday drive.